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A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 21, 2001
Tariq Ali
Killing
Mr. Biswas
November 20, 2001
Sam Bahour
Plain
Truths About Palestine
Michael Ratner
Moving Toward
a
Police State
November 19, 2001
Edward
Said
Suicidal
Ignorance
November 18, 2001
John Farley
Shame on You,
Chelsea!
Kalpana
Sharma
Flower
Power:
A Blow for Peace
Tony Mauro
The Quirin
Ruling:
FDR's Horrible Precedent for Bush's Terror Courts
C.G. Estabrook
American
Crusades
November 17, 2001
Zoltan Grossman
It Ain't
Over Til It's Over
November 16, 2001
Rick Giombetti
Rep.
McDermott and
the Decay of Liberalism
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Voices
of Muslim Feminists
Mokhiber/Weissman
Kill,
Kill, Kill
November 15, 2001
George
Monbiot
Blasting
Our Way
Toward Peace
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens
Mind-Meld
and Hot Bodies
Steve
Perry
Afghan
Puzzle Palace
RAWA
We Do Not Accept
the Northern Alliance
November 14, 2001
Jensen/Mahajan
The
Press Must Press Harder on Afghanistan
David Vest
The Great Unificator
Harry
Browne
Preventing
Future Terrorism
November 13, 2001
Peter Mahoney
Veteran's
Day, 2001
Rep. Ron
Paul
Expanding
NATO
Is a Bad Idea
November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
All That...
Patriotism
Nancy
Oden
My
Day at the Airport
CounterPunch Wire
East Timor
10 Years
After the Massacre
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
Resources:
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Five
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By Alexander
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Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
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The
Phoenix Program
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November
21, 2001
Broadcasting and Bombing:
America's
Message of Greed and Violence for Thanksgiving and Ramadan as
We Leave the Children Behind
By Tom Turnipseed
With some U.S. military aircraft broadcasting
and others bombing, the United States delivered its message of
greed and violence to the people of Afghanistan during the first
week of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. An airborne special
forces radio station aboard an aircraft broadcast the announcement
of a $25 million dollar reward for information leading to the
location or capture of Osama bin Laden or bin Laden's chief lieutenant,
Aiman al-Zawahiri while American warplanes carried out heavy
bombing strikes around the populous city of Kandahar, a Taliban
stronghold. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the big
money offer that is also being made by dropping reward leaflets
might entice the Afghans to "begin crawling through those
tunnels and caves looking for the bad folks."
Under a headline of "America Will
Take No Prisoners," the Times of London reported on November
20 that Rumsfeld also said, "The United States is not inclined
to negotiate surrenders, nor are we in a position, with relatively
small numbers of forces on the ground, to take prisoners."
A Taliban spokesman said they would "fight on" but
had no idea of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts. U.S. General Tommy
Franks said the U.S. would send in more ground troops, including
marines, to "destroy the terrorist network."
The end game of the high tech destruction
of the ruling Taliban's archaic army in Afghanistan, and much
of the impoverished nation's infrastructure could be nearing.
Concurrently, a drumbeat has begun to crescendo for renewed bombing
and war against Iraq from the Bush Administration and its political
minions. The estimated one-billion-dollar-a-month cost to U.S.
taxpayers of the Afghan action that directly benefits the defense
industry in its "War on Terrorism" bonanza could be
diminished, so more targets are needed in "those nations
that aid or harbor evil-doers." Consequently, the face of
Osama bin Laden, the consummate evil villain of Bush II, is beginning
to morph back into the face of Saddam Hussein, the ultimate evil-doer
of Bush I.
Under Secretary of State John Bolton
accused Iraq of building a germ warfare arsenal at a biological
weapons conference in Geneva even as stories of home-grown anthrax
producers surface and new leads point toward domestic terrorism
of the McVeigh variety in the anthrax mailings. USA Today reported
on November 19 that the "Defense Department strategists
are building a case for massive bombing of Iraq as a new phase
of President Bush's war against terrorism," under a front
page headline of "Pentagon builds case on Iraq." In
South Carolina on November 13, U.S. Rep. Lindsey Graham said
he supports "war against Iraq" at a fund-raiser in
his campaign to succeed Strom Thurmond in the U.S. Senate. Isn't
it time to consider what happens to innocent children when we
make war against these "monstrous evil-doers?"
Since the war against Iraq in 1991, deaths
among babies and children have more than doubled due to the use
of depleted uranium bombs by the U.S. causing birth defects and
cancer and the U.S.-pushed economic sanctions causing malnutrition
and starvation. Between 1970 and 1990 Iraq had experienced unprecedented
economic development.
A United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF)
spokesman, Alfred Ironside, told me 120,000 Afghan children are
in "immediate danger of death due to famine, illness and
cold." On November 16, UNICEF issued a press release referring
to a 1997 study of child trauma in Kabul and compared it with
anecdotal evidence now emerging from the on-going United States
attack on Afghanistan. It said there were strong indications
that long after the bombing and fighting ends, the nightmare
will continue for Afghan children. The twenty year conflict began
when Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviet Union. A U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency-sponsored resistance movement that included
a 22 year old son of a Saudi Arabian billionaire named Osama
bin Laden was formed to expel the Soviets.
The UNICEF study conducted among several
hundred children offer a hint of what Afghan children are going
through today. Nearly 100% of the children witnessed acts of
violence during the fighting, two-thirds saw dead body parts
and nearly half of them saw multiple people killed in rocket
and artillery attacks. As a result, 90% of the children said
they worried about what would happen to them in the future; 75%
reported constant fear, even when no immediate danger was present;
over one half said they had difficulty experiencing feelings
of sadness or happiness of any kind; and 8 in 10 children reported
they sometimes or often "feel so sad I can not cope with
life."
In the prosperous U.S. that the "evil-doers"
are said to envy so, the Children's Defense Fund says that every
11 seconds, a child is neglected or abused; every 44 seconds,
a baby is born into poverty; every minute a baby is born without
health insurance; and every 2 and a half hours, a child is killed
by guns. In South Carolina, 218,000 children have no health insurance.
President Bush's PR folks have appropriated
the Children Defense Fund's slogan of " Leave No Child Behind,"
but Bush refuses to see that the United States is making war
on children. CP
Tom Turnipseed
is an attorney, writer and civil rights activist in Columbia,
SC. http://www.turnipseed.net
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